Raleigh, North Carolina-based gaming company Imangi Studios announced this week that its hit game Temple Run has crossed one billion downloads. The total is the combination of both the first and second releases of the endless runner.

Imangi notes in the press release that players have collectively spent over 216,018 years playing its Temple Run titles, which are available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. They’ve also played 32 billion games, and run 50 trillion meters…... Read the rest of this post here

I’ve since stopped playing the game and only occasionally fire it up to challenge myself with beating my best scores.

If you’ve been yearning for a substantial Temple Run 2 content update as much as I have, today is the day as a new version of the game surfaced on the App Store featuring a playable Santa character, various holiday-themed artifacts, new collectible masks, a cool new water slide feature that lets you swim through raging rapids and lots more.

Earlier this year, Apple began offering free iTunes content via its Apple Store app in an effort to drive traffic towards its native web portal. This content may include a free iBook, music, an app or a game.

Fans of Despicable Me, listen up! As is so common with new movie releases nowadays, the makers behind Despicable Me have released a mobile game. Do you also like Temple Run? Blimey, this is your special day!

Gameplay

The game see’s your character taking on loads of obstacles and collecting tokens and bananas to impress your big, bad boss, Gru to become Employee of the Year. You’ll run past flailing colleagues, spinning (and aggressive!) robots and have to navigate narrow platforms and overhanging pipes. You can move your character by simply swiping left or right, up or down and tilting the device left/right to keep him on the straight and narrow. As you can probably tell, it’s very much like Temple Run but you may find it more enjoyable.
The animation and backgrounds to this app are what absolutely make it. They are incredible! It’s so rich with detail, colours and there are always some wayward minions swinging on ladders or something just as mischievous to keep you entertained. Your eyes should be on the road though, and make sure you collect those bananas and tokens. If you run into an obstacle or get hit, you will cough up some of the bananas and the amount you need to complete the level increase. If you don’t have any, then you’ll either have to start from the beginning or you’ll have to cough up some real money to buy some. There are some ‘set’ animations that happen during the ‘rush’, for example right at the beginning you jump out of the control room onto the track and you swing off of half a dozen colleagues. The minion itself has some animations which surely will squeeze a reluctant giggle out of even the most grumbly of people.

In order to progress through the level you will need to complete the levels unique set of challenges and obstacles. These obstacles have more depth to them than the Temple Run games, as personally I found the Temple Run games to get quite repetitive and dull after a while. Despicable Me: Minion Rush has a bit more longevity to it and should keep you entertained for longer. This is a game that you can pick up and play at any time and get a good experience out of it. You do not need to sit down and get into it and it’s great for when you’re sat waiting for five minutes.

Not only is there the core missions, you can play some fun bonus levels which feature other characters from the movie.

There is a social element to the game where you are able to see your friends’ highscores or taunt them with minion messages to coax them into competing against you.

Price

As I mentioned above, this is a fremium game. You can download it for free, but to buy extra tokens require in-app purchases. Sometimes these can be quite large! For 200 tokens, it’s £1.49, but for 1200 tokens it’ll cost you £6.99! You can easily see how these start to add up. The fremium model seems to be the most popular monetization model for the developers, allowing players to progress through the game quicker by injecting real money. Be careful when giving this app to small children (or make sure you have some blocks on!) so that they don’t spend all your hard-earned money on some virtual tokens.

The app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Conclusion

In terms of originality, there is none. It is effectively Temple Run, but with some fancier animations/backgrounds and a story line behind it. However, this is an outrageously entertaining game. It’s fun, thrilling (at points) and so far I haven’t got bored of it. By this time on Temple Run, I had.

There is a wealth of detail and amusing animation, with the obstacles keeping you on your toes. The fremium model can sometimes be extremely frustrating, always bombarding you to buy extra features. But this game is not pushy, if you want to buy you can buy, and there are no ads. I forgot to mentioned audio in the body of the review, but some of the sound effects that crop up are also quite amusing!

Overall, it is a very enjoyable game with slick movements and unique obstacles.

Temple Run. It’s a game you’ll have probably seen on the bus or train recently and basically features a guy or girl running along at great speed. Sweep left or right to turn at the appropriate time, up to jump and try to make sure that your character doesn’t fall down.

Now this “new app” is available for Windows Phone. All great, you can get it here and it’s free, which is even better.

But…

Doah, you knew there was going to be a “but” didn’t you?

Yes, this isn’t strictly a new game any more. It’s been out on the iPhone for more than a year and Temple Run 2 has been out for a bit too. Oh, and if you bought a Windows Phone 7.x handset then you’re left out in that cold, cold snow my friend. This is Windows Phone 8 only. You old-timers on a Windows Phone 7.x device can just go and take a walk..

Oh and one other thing, it doesn’t support the Nokia Lumia 620 even though it runs WP8. Not enough memory apparently. Remember how we used to poke fun at Android for being fragmented?

Honestly, read the comments in this post and you’ll see the reaction Microsoft is getting from their very own customer base. Sigh…

Today Imangi’s second Hollywood tie-in is available for download as a universal build for iPhones and iPads. As the name suggests, Temple Run: Oz ties nicely with ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’, an upcoming fantasy adventure film directed by Sam Raimi and due to hit theaters this coming Friday, March 8…(...)Read the rest of Temple Run: Oz slides its way into App Store ahead of Friday’s flick release

Just as we anticipated, the critically acclaimed Temple Run 2 is now available in the Google Play Store. It succeeds the original Temple Run game and offers users the same classic game play, but improves upon graphics and includes different environments for the character to traverse.

If you are interested in playing Temple Run 2 on your Android device, then feel free to check out the Play Store link below. It requires that your smartphone and/or tablet is running at least Android 2.1 or higher. Just as a side note, Androinica is not responsible for how many hours you may waste by playing Temple Run 2.

Last week Imangi Studios released a sequel to its widely popular endless-runner game, Temple Run. The game landed here in the US on Thursday night, and within 8 hours it had shot up to the #1 Free App in the App Store.

But apparently its impressive run didn’t stop there. Imangi issued a press release this morning announcing that Temple Run 2 was downloaded more than 20 million times, on iOS alone, in its first four days of availability…(...)Read the rest of Temple Run 2 sees 20 million iOS downloads in 4 days

The second installment to the popular run’n'jump game should be hitting Apple’s iTunes servers in New Zealand and Australia just about any minute now. Like it’s predecessor, Temple Run 2 is a free download for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices and Android smartphones and tablets. Those with a US account on the App Store should check the store at around 11pm Eastern, 8pm Pacific Time, when Temple Run 2 is due to hit US shores. The original Temple Run hit over a hundred million downloads across iOS and Android, with more than 75 million downloads in 2012 alone. Admittedly, the sequel should prove just as popular…